Sid Meier's Starships Guide: How to Pick the Right Leader

Selecting the right Leader to use in Sid Meier’s Starships is not always an easy process. They’ll shape how your fleet handles itself from the very start of your play-through to its inevitable (and hopefully victorious) end. Some of the eight available leaders provide you with a benefit right from the start while others assist the creation of your empire over time. The trick to a successful campaign often relies upon whether you took into account the special bonus given by your chosen leader and how you should play to properly use that unique boon.

So that’s why we are here. Sid Meier’s Starships may basically be 4X gameplay on a smaller scale but there’s still enough going on outside of the bombastic ship combat to warrant more than a simple click to kill mentality. You may not think winning the game simply through obtaining high levels of technology will ever work for you. Try it with a Leader specifically tuned to what you’ll need though and this soon becomes much more viable.

With each leader will be their in-game description, along with how this should be used and which victory they are going to be best able to achieve. Take note that it’s the Affinity which changes the basic design of your vessels, not who leads your fleet to its destiny.

Samatar Jama Barre

Samatar Jama Barre is a colonist of the highest order. His-25% to city cost means that cities will cost you less food, allowing your population to spike more quickly than that of other leaders. With Samatar, it’s always best to go flying out into the wilds with the express intention of settling as many cities as possible in order to boost your income and population percentage.

Playing as Samatar and using his bonus to give you greatest effect possible is a three step process. The first comes in flying around the map to constantly find new planets ripe for colonization. Since his passive boost means you’ll need as many cities as possible, make that there are Warp Gate improvements between every planet you’re colonizing, ensuring that you can get to them quickly should someone else encroach on your prospective planets. The third step requires that you place as many Aquifers as possible. These improvements will cost you metal but massively increase your food production, allowing even more cities to be built.

Without a doubt the victory type Samatar Jama Barre is most suited to in Sid Meier’s Starships is the Population victory. With the ease he has when creating new cities, it’s easy to catapult your population well ahead of your peers for a much lower cost and without the need for too much conflict.

Daoming Sochua

Daoming Sochua begins the game with two random tech upgrades. You’ve got no choice in what these are but you can be safe in the knowledge that they’ll boost the power of your fleet. There are nine different items of technology so if you select Daoming, be prepared to keep a close eye on which ones have been randomly given to you for easier crafting of your fleet.

Effectively using this boost can be done in one of two ways. You can either channel these upgrades to pull the technical capabilities of your fleet further into new heights, or keep them as a stepping stone towards high quantities of research. Supplementing these two tech upgrades is actually incredibly easy through the simple completion of missions. Many of them will offer you a free tech upgrade. Applying this to already research technologies can pull you leaps and bounds ahead of the opponent.

Daoming Sochua is well suited to Domination (or hostile takeover Population if you prefer) and Science victories. The first is obvious as the tech boosts mean that your fleet is better suited to combat. Achieving the second with this boost of two upgrades is made much easier. Research is expensive so getting two for free is a significant help to the future of this victory type. Help it along with plenty of Cryptolabs producing Science and you’ll be on your way to an easy victory in science.